Plus One (19 page)

In any case, after their little man-to-man, Rex Benjamin seemed to go into a full adversarial crouch, doing everything in his power to undermine the transaction. The first troubles centered on inspections. According to the official report, the chimney's firebox was damaged, roots had broken through the sewer line, and three types of toxic mold spores had been detected in the basement.

Colby swore the report was standard, routine for a house of that size and age. They'd know more once they brought in the chimney, sewer, and mold specialists.

The Benjamins, however, were having none of it. After complaining that the general inspection was “intrusive,” they dropped all pretenses of civility, cursing and slamming down the phone when Colby called and telling their agent they refused to speak to “that hustler with the haircut.” The sewer technician arrived at the arranged time to find the gates locked; inside, his calls were apparently unheard by Judy, who he spotted in the driveway chatting with a car detailer scrubbing the tires of her SUV.

Two days later, the mold man found Mr. Benjamin wiping down the basement with a bucket of dishwashing detergent. After “inadvertently” locking the mold guy in the basement for ninety minutes and then ordering him to leave their property immediately, Mr. Benjamin told his agents his house was available as-is, with no credits for repair or remediation of any kind.

Colby said they should lodge a formal complaint. But somehow Alex couldn't muster much anger. For one thing, he couldn't help feeling sympathetic toward Mr. Benjamin.
Of course
he was upset. And anyway, the chimney was probably fine; according to Huck, inspectors were always finding problems they could charge you thousands of dollars to correct; similarly, Huck told him he shouldn't get too worked up over the mold, which he called “a pretend poison hyped by fake specialists for paranoid housewives
trying to explain why their kids can't do math—what do you think
cheese
is made of?”

Still, as the deadline approached, Alex began to panic. Maybe Colby's theory was right and Lester Price had circled back with a bigger offer. Maybe Mr. Benjamin wasn't wounded and irrational but devious and manipulative? Maybe bad things happen to bad people, too?

Or maybe Alex was just over-thinking. This was business. However grievous the injury Mr. Benjamin had sustained, Alex was pretty sure
he
hadn't had anything to do with it. Fair was fair. An agreement was an agreement. He wouldn't be bullied out of a deal so Mr. Benjamin could get a better price from Mr. Movie Star. Not only would he not drop out, he would add up the total estimated repairs and throw around a few decimals of his own.

Thirty-six-thousand-nine-hundred-and-two
. Alex's request for credits was eminently reasonable, nothing like the hideous digits associated with the purchase itself. He itemized the repairs in a packet that also included a stack of bank statements and in what Alex believed would be the clincher, a snapshot of Sam and Sylvie.

“It's like
Silence of the Lambs
,” he told Huck over coffee. “Psychos have a harder time killing their victims when they know details about their lives. Just look at that picture.”

“Cute,” Huck agreed.

“No—adorable,” Alex said. The picture had been taken on a crisp fall afternoon in Echo Park, the kids rosy-cheeked and wind-swept, as sweet and presentable as catalog models. “Now check the back. I've been poking around online. Read my little note.”

Huck turned over the photo. “Children's exposure to airborne toxic mold can lead to bronchitis, chronic diarrhea, bleeding in the lungs, and even death,'” he read. “Jesus, dude—you are not kidding around.”

“You think it's too much?” Alex asked.

• • •

Ordinarily, as far as Alex understood the process, the rest was up to the agents. But apparently his letter had upset the normal order. “He's lost faith in his representation,” said Colby. Mr. Benjamin would only discuss credits with Alex face to face. And the soonest he could do it was Friday morning, the last day of their ten-day accelerated escrow.

“Is that even
legal
?” Alex said. “I can't just go in there and
hash
something out. He'll eat me alive.”

“Just go in there and hold your ground,” Colby said. “Time to
nut up,
Alex!”

As he walked up the long front pathway Friday morning, his heart started to race. It was a fine day, crisp and bright. The front yard looked vast and lush. By the time he reached the front door and gave it a few tentative taps, his hands were shaking.

Mr. Benjamin was waiting in a room overlooking the garden, with tall arched windows and Persian rugs. He was in a tweed jacket and chinos, an empty cappuccino cup and Alex's packet arranged before him on a spindly antique table. His reading glasses were propped on the end of his nose.

“Take a seat,” he said, motioning to an overstuffed chair. Alex clasped his hands together and sat. He should've guessed Rexford Benjamin would go for this sort of formality. Here
he
was in his ratty cargo shorts and vintage Dead Kennedys shirt; he'd made a conscious choice not to dress any differently than he normally would on a Saturday morning.

“So,” Alex said, then stopped. Silence. He'd rehearsed how to start, but now that he was here, “so” was all he had. He felt himself sinking into the armchair.

Mr. Benjamin tapped on the folder of bank statements. “Let's start with this, shall we? I don't really watch TV, but from the looks of it, your
wife
has done quite nicely. At least lately. Must be nice.”

“The show business dollar is a very nice dollar,” Alex said.

“But if you'll allow me,” he said. “You're all over the place here. You've got stock reports, pension plans, bank records, some sort of promissory note here from someone at a studio. Why aren't you better consolidated?”

Alex had only a vague understanding of “consolidated,” but he was pretty sure that a guy who'd just had his entire family fortune embezzled by a single crooked money manager was telling him to put all his money in one pot.

Heart racing, Alex racked his brain for a halfway-informed response, mentioning a “portfolio manager's asset allocation.” Across the table, Mr. Benjamin looked pained. Alex got quiet and tried to straighten his back against the quicksand of upholstery.

“Let's move on to the inspections,” Mr. Benjamin said, holding up the chimney report with a thumb and index finger. “This,” he said, “
is horseshit
.”

Then, with a dramatic flourish, he held up the sewer inspection. “
Bullcrap
.”

Finally, he held up the mold report. “Absolute one-hundred-percent
mooseturd
.” He waved a pencil in front of him like a baton. “This home has been
scrupulously
maintained. Any suggestion otherwise is unconscionable.”

Alex crossed one leg over the other and nodded, he hoped thoughtfully. He chose his words carefully.

“I want you to know, Mr. Benjamin, that I appreciate, given all you've been through, that you may have some difficulties with
trust
,” he said. “But I also hope you can appreciate that I'm not trying to cheat you out of anything.”

Mr. Benjamin took off his reading glasses and drummed his fingers on the pile of papers.

“Please,” Alex went on. “Big picture here. Our agreement is more than fair. And these credits are such a tiny piece of this, comparatively.”

The old man narrowed his eyes. “I'll do half.”

“Half?” Alex said. “I was thinking more like the full thirty-six.”

Mr. Benjamin scratched his chin. “Let's put a pin in that for the moment. Have you had a chance to look over the sale list?”

Colby had passed along a list of sale items—Alex had stopped reading after two pages of French antiques, Persian rugs, and ornamental fixtures. “We're not really chandelier people.”

“There's one item in particular that didn't go on that list—and I really think you should take it.”

“What's that?”

“Judy's tanning bed. It's in the guest room upstairs? Big bronze monster, with the fluorescent lights? Judy
adores
it, but no way can we fit it in the new place.”

Alex nodded, not quite getting where this was going.

“She got it for eight thousand a year ago. I'll give it to you for three. Take it and we've got a deal.”

“So—what are you saying? I buy the tanning bed… you take the credits? We're done here?”

Mr. Benjamin leaned forward. “It would mean a lot to me,” he said.

Alex scratched the back of his head. No way this wasn't a win. But from the look on Mr. Benjamin's face, this wasn't about the money—to him, it was a fuck-you. To him, to his wife, to this whole situation. But so what if unloading his wife's tanning bed on Alex let Mr. Benjamin feel like he was the real man? Let him have the bullshit symbolic victory. The only thing it said about Alex was that he could pull himself out of this horrible armchair, close the deal, and never see Mr. Benjamin again.

“Deal,” he said.

Eight

S
omehow, in a blur of conference calls and signatures and notary stamps, it was official: Alex and Figgy were the legal owners of the house on Sumter Court. Or to be precise, the house was owned by a blind trust with Alex listed as sole officer—Figgy's lawyers had arranged it that way to keep her name off public records. It seemed overly secretive—who did they think they were, Brangelina?—but he began to see the sense in it when Figgy brought home a stack of letters she'd received at the studio from a fan with an obsessive, tiny-print scrawl ruminating about her inspiration, her children, her underwear.

“I'm the sole officer of a blind trust—can you believe that?” said Alex, leaning back in the orange vinyl booth of Hop Ming, the Zicklin's favorite Chinese place. The table was crowded with platters of glazed pork, hunks of spicy eggplant, and mounds of egg foo young. The kids were squirmy and restless, but Alex couldn't have been happier.

Alex had been riding the same weird high since the heavy cluster of keys dropped into his hand that afternoon, signaling they'd officially “taken possession”—how he loved that phrase, almost as much as he hated the phrase “jumbo loan.” To mark the occasion, Clive had invited them out for a celebratory dinner. Figgy was still at work, but Alex cleaned up the kids and made the trek over the hill to Encino for the five-thirty reservation.

“Mazel tov, Alex,” Clive said. “It's quite a house. Home for Hollywood royalty.”

Beside him, Figgy's mom, Joan, murmured through teeth clenched on a rubber band. She'd been attempting to get a braid into Sylvie's hair since the hot and sour soup. “I'm just not sure I like this trust of yours,” she said. “What's to stop you from—”

“From what?” Alex said. “What am I going to do? Kick everyone out and force my family to move in with
you
? I'd never do that to my children.”

“Thanks, Dad,” called Sam from the corner, slumped, bored, done with his dinner and ripping up a napkin. “I'm not moving to Bubbie's house—it smells like armpits.”

Joan ignored the remark and kept on braiding, motioning at Alex with her elbow. “I'm just saying—I don't like it. It's dangerous. A husband shouldn't have so much power.”

“God knows I don't,” intoned Clive, dipping a shred of duck into a dish of hoisin. “I can barely sign a check without an okay from the boss. Anyway, Joannie—your daughter's got nothing to worry about. Mr. A here is doing right by Figgy.”

“Thank you, Clive,” Alex said.

“And for a goy, I understand you're quite the dealmaker. I hear you drove a real bargain on credits.”

Alex was pleased at the thought that Figgy had bragged about his negotiating. “You should have heard him at the end,” he said, launching into the
Frost vs. Nixon
version of the story he'd told ten or fifteen times over the past three days. “At the front door, on
my way out, he grabs my elbow and says”—here Alex lowered his voice into an old-fogey croak— “ ‘Go ahead and dig up the sewer system, bring in hazmat crews, rip off the roof, and start all over again for all I care.' ”